All gardeners will assure you that there’s nothing more crucial when referring to gardening than having the best soil possible to get healthy plants growing in your garden. Compost serves to build the soil in your garden beds by improving the structure of the soil, making your soil much more resistant to drought conditions by keeping from losing moisture as rapidly and it also renders a large amount of nutrients to help your plants grow better. This means that you will not need to practice gardening by the use of commercial fertilizers when you apply compost in your garden. This all means you grow healthier fruits and vegetables for your family

So, how exactly do you make compost? Composting is really simple once you get the hang of it. You can use almost all of the trash you throw in your trash at home. You will be able to also feel good about the decision to compost, realizing you are recycling your own home wastes instead of just sacking them up and making your trash someone else’s problem. There are a  couple of materials that just don’t decompose very well in the backyard compost pile. We’ll cover those in an upcoming article. But for now, some materials you can use to create compost are: banana peels, kitchen refuse that doesn’t contain processed oils, eggshells, coffee filters, used coffee grounds and even used paper towels and napkins. You’d be astonished at the amount of household trash that can be composted.

You normally want to line up an area in your backyard that is out of sight when producing compost, unless you own a compost bin, of course. With your compost pile  at continuous exposure to the elements you are going to have an infrequent few pieces of compostable material drifting around your compost pile. Also be informed that compost piles will sometimes catch the attention of wild critters wandering in the night and if you have not buried your waste deep into the compost pile, they may just stop and go digging for a midnight snack. Just be sure to consider this when deciding where to place your compost pile.

Many people use a compost bin when composting at home. They love the fact that their compost is well contained and compost bins usually prevent access to the pile from animal pests and they also keep trash from blowing out into your yard. Your pile needs to be one solid bulk of material and compost bins help keep your compost better organized for the composting process to proceed. If the compost bin has a cover it will require that you water it on occasion, but this also helps keep heavy rainfalls from washing away invaluable nutrients, namely nitrogen through percolating.

You need a requisite 30:1 ratio of carbon materials/nitrogen materials to get your first pile of compost going. Don’t let the technological factor of composting deter you. Scientists know by discovery that this is the idealistic ratio of carbon and nitrogen for microorganisms to best degrade compostable materials. The further you get away from this ratio in either direction the less desirable the results you ought expect. You need your compost to get hot. Quickly. And by keeping your carbon and nitrogen material at the preferential ratio in your compost pile you should anticipate it to do so within a few days. As soon as your compost starts cooling back off you should turn the outside parts of the pile to the inside. This not only introduces oxygen into the inner parts of the pile, but also pushes any materials that have not yet been exposed to the microorganisms, to the inside.

As you get more knowledgeable at composting you are able to tell precisely when your compost is ready more comfortably. Compost can be added directly to the garden beds as a mulch or spread across the top of the soil and plowed in. Your gardens will produce much healthier plants by addition of compost to the soil.

John from http://www.growingyourgreens.com/ shares with you two easy ways that you can compost at home. The standard compost pile uses greens and browns whic…
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